14th Lok Sabha 2004
Most analysts believed the NDA, riding high on the feel-good factor and its promotional campaign 'India Shining', would beat anti-incumbency and win clear majority. The economy had shown steady growth during the BJP rule and the disinvestment of PSUs had been on track. The Foreign Exchange Reserves of India stood at more than $100 billion (the seventh largest in the world and a record for India). The service sector had also generated a lot of jobs.
These elections, compared to all the other Lok Sabha elections of the 1990s, saw more of a head-to-head battle between personalities (Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi) as there was no viable Third Front alternative. The fight was between the BJP and its allies on the one hand and the Congress and its allies on the other. However, regional differences emerged on the national scene.
The BJP fought the elections as part of the NDA, although some of its seat-sharing agreements were made with strong regional parties outside of the NDA such as the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu.
Ahead of the elections there were attempts to form a Congress-led national level joint opposition front. In the end, an agreement could not be reached, but on regional level alliances between Congress and regional parties were made in several states. This was the first time that Congress contested with that type of alliances in a parliamentary election.
The left parties, most notably the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India, contested on their own in their strongholds West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, confronting both Congress and NDA forces. In several other states, such as Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, they took part in seat sharings with Congress. In Tamil Nadu they were part of the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance.
Two parties refused to go along with either Congress or BJP, Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party. Both are based in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of India.
Though pre-poll predictions were for an overwhelming majority for the BJP, the exit polls (immediately after the elections and before the counting began) predicted a hung parliament. However, even the exit polls could only indicate the general trend and nowhere close to the final figures. There is also the general perception that as soon as the BJP started realising that events might not proceed entirely in its favour, it changed the focus of its campaign from India Shining to issues of stability. The Congress, who was regarded as "old-fashioned" by the ruling BJP, was largely backed by poor, rural, lower-caste and minority voters that did not participate in the economic boom of previous years that created a large wealthy middle class and thus achieved its overwhelming victory.
The reverses in the pre-poll predictions are ascribed to various reasons depending on the point of view. People were more concerned about issues of their immediate environment such as water scarcity, drought, etc., than national issues and the anti-incumbency factor was at work for the BJP allies.
On May 13, the BJP conceded defeat and the Congress was able to put together a comfortable majority of more than 335 members out of 543 (including external support from BSP, SP, MDMK and the Left front) with the help of its allies and under the direction of Sonia Gandhi. This post-poll alliance was called the United Progressive Alliance.
However, Sonia Gandhi surprised almost all observers by declining to become the new prime minister. Instead, she asked former finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh to take up the mantle. Dr Singh had previously served under Congress prime minister Narasimha Rao in the early-1990s, where he was seen as one of the architects of India's first economic liberalisation plan that staved off an impending national monetary crisis.
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